The Inside Dope

Some people just never get enough! I was rockin' on my front porch the other evenin', enjoyin' a nice pipeful o' Nepal's finest and thinkin' ahead along the happy trails o' the north country where the If was headed on the August change-over, when these goofy characters who run this newspaper I work for pulled up in front o' my modest crib, hollerin' and grinnin' all over the place.
Before I could run inside and hide like I usually do-I mean a person's home is their own castle, I've always believed that-they were up the steps and grabbin' at my hand. "Congratulations, you old buzzard," they shouted in my ear. "We're goin' weekly the first of September!"
"Like hell you are!" I hollered back-"or you' re goin' without me, one or the other! And-what about my vacation pay? You little gangsters have been dodgin' the Iffster all this time, and now here you come tryin' to give me a heart attack!"
But reason would not prevail, and while I have yet to make up my mind about hackin' out one a' these columns every blinkin' week, like they want me to-and who wouldn't, a man o' my experience and all - I can't say that I blame 'em. Now the ol' Iffster use'ta work at one o' the big papers in town -'course I didn't have to grind it out every day, but that 's another story-an' it breaks an old journeyman's heart to read the kind of sensation-mongerin' swill both o' the dailies are usin' to compete with those idiots on TV.
It's been comin' on for a long time-in fact I quit back in the early 50's because it was gettin' to be too much for me back then-but it seems like the big papers and the TV are determined to tear down what's left of the city, chasin' out everybody but the poorest folks and the creeps who prey on them.
If you just stayed in the suburbs and ate the daily media garbage along with your Big Macs and Taco Bells, like so much of their audience do, you'd think a person wouldn't dare stick their head out the window without gettin' it shot off or somethin'. No police in sight, gangs runnin' wild on every street, thugs and muggers hidin' behind every lamppost and bush, just like on TV.
Now this ain't the widest open city in the world- more's the pity-but there's a whole lot more to it than the contents of a bunch o' rednecks' nightmares, and if somebody don't start pullin' the covers off the people who are runnin' things around here, includin' the newspapers and TV, it's gonna turn out just the way they want it to.
Incidentally, don't it seem funny that these police who are gettin' paid so much a year can't find out what's goin' on around them? They did a pretty good job of trackin' down all the radicals and left-leanin' citizens back in the sixties, even when that wasn't their job. Yet they tell us they can't put their finger on the troublemakers who are makin' things miserable for so many people.
Like Nadine Brown sez somewhere in this issue, it's not the police who are ever gonna solve a community's problems-the people have to do that themselves. All the police can do is try to keep the more dangerous elements in line, but the folks in the neighborhoods have to draw that line for 'em.
This old-timer can't help but think that they're just sittin' back and lettin' the folks they consider their inferiors tear each other apart, waitin' to be idolized and given their head again by the responsible white citizens who truly appreciate them. When the neighborhoods are torn apart by freeways and stuck full o' abandoned buildings, when the corner businesses have followed their white pals to the suburbs, when the papers and the TV and the big shots in business have given up on everything but downtown- and they ain't too sure o' that-what else can a person expect?
Anyway, the Detroit Sun-yeah, that's what they call it now-will be issuing forth into the local media void every Friday from now on, starting September 3, and-OK, l've talked myself into it -The Iffster will be there too.
See you in September...

BY IFFY THE DOPSTER